New affordable shuttle bus service to Abbotsford International Airport

With the growing number of air passengers now flowing through Abbotsford International Airport (YXX), there is a need to improve ground transportation connections across the Lower Mainland.

Such a link has now been created with the new Abbotsford Airport Shuttle service, which now runs between the YXX terminal building and SkyTrain King George Station in Surrey City Centre, with just one stop at the Gloucester Business Center located near Highway 1’s interchange at 264th Street in Langley Township.

The service, operated by ACE Charters, is relatively cheap at $11.50 per trip each way. Passengers can reserve their seats online.

Compared to other options, this shuttle is relatively frequent, making six scheduled trips per trip throughout the day, with the first bus leaving King George Station at 6 a.m. and the last bus at 6:45 in the evening. For departure from YXX, the first bus is at 7:15 am and the last bus is at 8 pm. The service runs once every two hours and 30 minutes.

End-to-end travel time is approximately one hour, with estimated times slightly longer during peak periods in peak traffic directions.

Current shuttle bus services serving YXX include Reliable Bus serving downtown Vancouver and SkyTrain Lougheed Town Center Station in Burnaby, with a rate of $35 each way, as well as Ebus for $35 each way to serve Guildford Town Center in Surrey and $47 each way to Pacific Central Station (SkyTrain Main Street-Science World Station) near downtown Vancouver. Rider Express also runs between YXX and Guildford Town Center or Pacific Central Station for $43 each way.

On the other hand, YXX is served by Uber, with a trip costing around $60 each way to/from King George Station in the best traffic conditions and when surge pricing is ineffective.

Recently, BC Transit extended the No. 66 Fraser Valley Express bus route to give it a new location at the west terminus of Lougheed Town Center Station, but its stop in Abbotsford is about a 15-minute drive from the airport. It should be noted that at the time of writing, all BC Transit services in the Fraser Valley are temporarily suspended due to an ongoing labor dispute. The No. 66 express has a standalone cash fare of $5 per trip.

In 2022, YXX’s air passenger numbers quickly returned to pre-pandemic numbers. It recorded 993,000 passengers in 2022 – just shy of the all-time historical record of 1.008 million passengers in 2019, built on several years of double-digit percentage passenger growth in the years heading for a pandemic. YXX is owned and operated by the City of Abbotsford.

YXX is currently served by Flair Airlines (Toronto-Pearson, Calgary, Edmonton, Kitchener/Waterloo), and WestJet (Toronto-Pearson, Edmonton, Hamilton, London, and seasonal destinations in Puerto Vallarta and San Jose del Cabo).